Judicial Review and the Digital Welfare State in the UK and Australia

This article focuses on a central aspect of the digital welfare state: automated social security systems. Two recent judicial reviews in the UK—Johnson and Pantellerisco—invalidated elements of the UK Government’s automated system for calculating universal credit payments. Similar issues came before the Federal Court of Australia in late 2019 in Amato, a successful judicial review of the Australian Government’s ‘robodebt’ programme. These decisions starkly illustrate how automated social security systems can lead to poor and unlawful decisions, particularly where government relies solely on data that is ill-suited for the task at hand, and how administrative law can be a powerful tool for reining in the worst excesses of these systems.